There are folks who have been thinking about this problem for a lot longer than you or me. Check out http://infrastructures.org for the concepts and ISConf[1] for the software. 1. http://trac.t7a.org/isconf - Ryan On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 02:18:37PM +0200, Benedict Verheyen wrote: > Hi, > > at home I run a server with actually to many stuff on it to be safe. But > i want to test a lot of things that it evolved to this situation. It has > ldap, samba, courier, spamassassin, clamav, squirrel, exim4,... > Anyway, for normal quick restores, restoring a backup is quick and painless. > > But i was thinking of a way to not only "restore" the system but also > "move" it. For instance, my system acts weird sometimes because of my > tampering with it so i would love to start from a clean sarge install > but with all my data and services running on it without spending to much > time on the reinstall. > > To manage things better i've begun moving services to uml instances on > the server and it keeps thing organised. > Now this also makes restoring the services easy as one would only have > to install a base system, install needed utils (uml,bridge) and copy the > uml files containing the systems and start those. > > As for other files like /etc/profile, /etc/inputrc, /etc/environment, i > guess you could make a package containing those files and installing > them when you install the "customizing" package or whatever you would > call such a package. > > A server reinstall or recovery would look like this: > * install debian > * install "mybase" package > which would be a fake pacakge depending on real apps that you want to > * install like aptitude less vim > * install "base config files" package > package containing config files, ... > /etc/profile > /etc/inputrc > /etc/skel > /etc/environment > /etc/bash.bashrc > ... > > This would leave you with a server "customized" to your liking and with > the base apps you can't do without. Then further customizing would be > required to run the services: > > * install "uml base" package > installs uml-utilities bridge-utils + config files + root file system > /etc/init.d/uml-bridge > /etc/init.d/uml-start > /usr/local/uml/rootfs_template > /usr/local/uml/rootfs > > Next would be restoring the data > * restore /root /home > > As for backups, you would need to backup /root /home and the uml systems > + maintain changes you make to files used in the custom packages. > > As said, this is not the fastest restore method but with regards to > reinstalling a server it might be pretty quick and versatile. > > 1. Is this doable? Any things i'm overlooking/comments/... > 2. What would be an easy way to making such custom packages be it for > installing config files or fake packages used to install your favourite > apps? > > Regards, > Benedict > > -- > Benedict Verheyen Debian User > http://www.heimdallitservices.be Public Key 0x712CBB8D > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > listmaster@lists.debian.org
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